Help sought in unsolved murders

Friday

Jan 21, 2011 at 12:01 AMJan 21, 2011 at 8:14 PM

It will be 16 years in July since the body of an 18-year-old Pekin boy was found stabbed to death behind Wilson School on Koch Street and 37 years since a young mother was brutally murdered in her Pekin apartment while her children were locked in a closet.

Sharon Woods Harris

It will be 16 years in July since the body of an 18-year-old Pekin boy was found stabbed to death behind Wilson School on Koch Street and 37 years since a young mother was brutally murdered in her Pekin apartment while her children were locked in a closet.

Pekin Police Department detectives are hoping that time has softened the hearts of the people who have information that can give closure to the families of Ritchie Neavear and Mary Lee Maynor.

The Neavear case is being featured on Crime Stoppers this week in an effort to generate new leads. The clip is the original Crime Stoppers that aired in 1995 after the murder.

“Periodically we review all of our cold cases,” said Pekin Police Deputy Chief Dennis Franks. “It has just come to the point now that we decided to run the original Crime Stoppers to see if we can get any new information.

“Last year we re-interviewed people connected to the investigation — not the suspects. These cases are not forgotten. We are trying to glean new information.”

Neavear murder

Neavear was last seen alive at 1 a.m. on June 30 at the residence of a friend, Kraig Beaney, on South Third Street, at a gathering with four people. The group was preparing to watch a movie when Neavear said he had to go meet a friend a few blocks over and not to play the movie until he returned.

Neavear never returned.

Friends did not report him missing until July 4, when they became suspicious when he did not pick up his paycheck from Burger King. The family did not report him missing right away because they thought he was staying at a friend’s house for a few days.

Ten days later, a contractor spreading gravel behind a maintenance shed on Wilson School property found Neavear’s body. The hot July weather had contributed to a rapid decomposition.

At a Tazewell County Coroner’s inquest it was revealed that Neavear died of multiple stab wounds.

Named suspects in the case by police include Randy J. Deskin, now 33, of Green Valley, and Wade R. Bonk, now 32, of Pekin.

Deskin is in the Mason County Corrections Facility awaiting trial on three counts of first-degree murder for the slaying of Dustin Englebrecht, 27, in rural Mason City in September 2009. Englebrecht was found buried in a shallow grave behind a barn on his property by his father and his uncle.

Both Bonk and Deskin have violent criminal histories.

Pekin Police Detective Rick VonRohr said the passage of time may help solve the Neavear case.

“All of these people who were around at the time of the murder were in their teens,” said VonRohr. “Now they are older and have kids of their own and may want to talk.”

Maynor murder

One of the small children who was locked in a closet as her mother was stabbed 70 times and strangled has been in contact with the Pekin Police Department in an effort to move along the investigation into her mother’s death, said VonRohr.

Maynor, 23, was found dead at 715 N. Fourth St., Pekin, on May 31, 1974. Her two daughters, ages 2 and 3 at the time, were locked in the closet by the murderer, according to Pekin Times archives.

Police developed two suspects in the murder, but they have long since left town. There was not enough evidence to charge them at the time.

There has been no new information in the case for many years, but the department does have some people whom they are seeking in the hope of solving the case, said VonRohr.

Policed are asking that anyone with information regarding either murder to call the department at (309) 346-3132 or Crime Stoppers at 347-9000.

Crime Stoppers offers a $1,000 reward for information that leads to an arrest and indictment of the perpetrators.